Friday, July 30, 2010

Remember what the saxophone did for that Ambrosia soft rock ballad last week? Check out what it does to make Neil Sedaka, of all people, fit in perfectly with the lazy summertime 70s groove. (Oh, and feel free to ignore the online petition.)

Dude, I love his hat. I can't wait until headgear like that comes around to being cool again.

Tuesday, July 27, 2010

A week from today, Kansas will be holding its primary elections (the complete rundown of candidates is here). State-wide, most of the races in this off-year election season are forgone conclusions; in a state that leans strongly Republican, with large (and well-funded) cohorts of both Christian traditionalists and fiscal libertarians supporting conservative candidates and causes, there is basically no doubt that the Republicans will dominate the state legislature, that our next governor will be retiring U.S. Senator Sam Brownback, and that our newest senator will be either Representative Todd Tiarht or Representative Jerry Moran, both of whom have been drenching the airwaves with negative ads, in a desperate effort to move every possible registered Republican voter in the state away from their (equally conservative) opponents and into their camp. I salute the Democrats going up against these machines for their citizenship and their optimism, but I confess I'm not really paying these races much attention.

The one place where I do see some genuinely interesting small-d democratic possibilities--that is, electoral choices that could really make a difference in government--is in the four House district races. Not all of them, of course. Despite a crowded Republican field, with the potential for infighting, standing against a single Democratic candidate, the first district in western Kansas is about as Republican it's possible to be, so there's unlikely to be any action there once the primary is over. In the second district, though, you've had the seat go back and forth between Republicans and Democrats lately, by relatively narrow margins. In the third district, you have a relatively popular Democrat retiring, with his wife running in the Democratic primary to replace him, and a large number of Republicans jostling for the chance to run against her. And then, there's my home district here in Wichita, the fourth.

The Democratic primary, assuming the well-funded (and smart, and admirable--I've met and like the guy) Raj Goyle and his people do their job well, should be cake-walk for him. It's on the Republican side, though, where most of my attention has been drawn. We've got a couple of very big-spending and well-connected heavyweights driving the polls, and then three reputable candidates nipping at their heels. With only a week to go, it's unlikely that much could change to alter the enormous advantages in name recognition and early voting that the two leaders have piled up...but something about the race really stirred the goo-goo part of my heart. One of the trailing primary candidates, Kansas Senator Jean Schodorf, broke with her party to help pass a truly responsible bit of legislation: an admittedly less-than-brilliantly-conceived, but nonetheless absolutely necessary, sales tax increase to prevent our public education system from having to suffer even further cuts to salaries, services, and more. In making that vote (which even the almost-certain Democratic candidate in this House race, Kansas Representative Goyle, wasn't willing to support), she did something difficult: she faithfully executed the difficult work which her election, in part, had entrusted to her. I like that, and it got me thinking about the different theories of representation, and how the representative story her career tells differs dramatically from what the one implied by her rivals for the Republican nomination.

So anyway, it inspired me to write up a column, and submit it to the Wichita Eagle. They've run stuff by me before, but at this point I don't think my piece will see the light of day. So here it is. Enjoy, if you feel so inclined.

**************

For many people, the upcoming primary contest to determine who the Republican nominee for the 4th Congressional district will be isn't much of a contest at all. While polls vary, the overall trend is clear: Wink Hartman and Mike Pompeo appear to be far better known, with many more vocal supporters, than any of their rivals. In fact, their level of popular support is about twice that of their nearest rival, Jean Schodorf.

This doesn't surprise me. Election after election has taught that if you have the money to buy signs and television time, to recruit talent and volunteers, to rent facilities and hold rallies, then you can usually drive the contest results. According to campaign finance reports, Hartman and Pompeo have together spent over $1.3 million on getting themselves elected, whereas Schodorf had spent less than $30,000, with other candidates spending even less. Media attention follows the money, polls follow media attention, polls attract more money, and so on.

In the midst of this seemingly inevitable process, though, there is always the possibility of surprises. Most of the time, if such an upset occurs, it will be because something or someone changed the narrative of the contest, and voters unexpectedly start thinking differently. The narrative which Hartman and Pompeo are banking on, however, appears to be a pretty stable one. It is a narrative about who is the most “conservative” candidate in the race. Into this narrative, recognizable by the way in which each candidate reiterates their position on numerous tried--and true conservative points–smaller government, lower taxes, military strength, protected borders, opposition to abortion, etc.--the two main candidates have poured all their efforts.

In political science, there is an oft-repeated distinction made between two models of representation. Voters may support a candidate because they believe she or he will be a better delegate, or because they believe she or he will be a better trustee. The “delegate” model sees the point of representation as electing someone who believes exactly as you do: since you can’t personally go to Topeka or Washington, DC, the aim is to elect a politician who mirrors your preferred views as much as possible, so as to directly take your place in the halls of government. Hence, what is important is to run down the checklist of beliefs, and to match oneself to a candidate as closely as possible.

The “trustee” model, on the other hand, assumes that, since government involves complex issues and less-than-ideal choices, the point is to elect someone you trust. Since the difficult work of government is to be entrusted to someone on behalf of all the voters within a particular district, state, or nation, you need to make sure that someone is responsible. Agreement on beliefs is important, but not an absolute, since while all voters have their preferences, government decision-making will never satisfy every preference, and compromises will often be necessary.

It’s interesting--and also not particularly surprising--to see the leaders of the Republican primary race competing furiously to prove themselves to be the most perfect conservative delegate. Our national political culture today mostly revolves around various scandals and controversies, not the hard work of governing, and so most voters end up looking to candidates, wanting to learn about their positions on such controversial issues. Certainly Hartman and Pompeo do not disappoint. Their websites are filled with references to defending “family values,” “small business values,” “American values,” and more. All good things, of course, but also rather broad, ideological things. Actual governing specifics and recommendations are not in much evidence.

The Schodorf campaign, underfunded as it may be, appears to be following a different narrative. When asked about “Obamacare,” Schodorf has talked carefully about what she dislikes about the health care reform law, but also what she likes about it. Her website lists specifically about what she has done, and what she would do, about Social Security, Medicare, agriculture, and more. She has defended her support of the recent sales tax increase as the responsible thing to do, if Kansas didn’t want to face even more cuts in public education. In short, Schodorf is presenting herself as a conservative candidate with a record of wisely caring for the public trust.

As the general elections for 2010 approach it is easy to suppose that what we are seeing is grand referendum on President Obama and the Democratic party. If such is the case, then perhaps local and state government issues don’t matter too much; what matters is getting one’s views on these broad, ideological issues heard in Washington DC. And in that case, Hartman and Pompeo are right to compete to be named the most dependable conservative delegate to be sent to the nation’s capital (after all, in the Senate Republican primary race, Tiahrt and Moran are doing the same).

But the truth, of course, is that even in the midst of nation-wide struggles over ideas, government still has work that needs to be done: among other things, teachers still need to be paid. To be sure, no serious candidate ever presents themselves solely as either a delegate or a trustee, and no voter would think solely in one way or another. But of all those Republicans running in the 4th Congressional district, right now only one seems to be attempting to follow more than just the simple delegate narrative. Former Republican senator Nancy Kassebaum Baker has noticed that. Before next Tuesday, I wonder if anyone else will.

Friday, July 16, 2010

As I said, I'm back, but I'm still keeping with the Lazy Summer thing, because I'm enjoying it too much to stop, even if no one else is, and even if finding videos of these guys playing live is sometimes a pain. If nothing else, it's a nice break from the Friday Night Video world of the 80s. So, once again, here's something from Midnight Special to make you just a little too mellow to possibly get any work done at all this Friday. (Also, my apologies for the weird floating Costa Rica graphics; I couldn't find any other copy online in as good a quality as this one.)

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Do I agree with every claim that Jasiri X makes in this video? Not at all. The Tea Party movement is some arguably reasonable and defensible, some borderline questionable, and a couple of plainly outrageous and nihilistic things all rolled into one...but it is not, I think, a racist movement. But then again, I also think it is highly doubtful, given the socio-economic, regional, and demographic realities of Tea Party activism, that Obama's most extreme critics would be quite so passionate if the Birther claim was that he was secretly a Presbyterian from Scotland, if you catch my drift. Take that for whatever it's worth.

(Oh, and yes--I'm back, as if my repair job on the tragically aborted Robbie Dupree video last Friday wasn't enough indication. But I'm not blogging, because it's terribly hot--making me lazy--and because I have two workshops to teach back to back, along with a paper and a review that need to written before mid-August--making me terribly busy. Hopefully, I'll be back in relatively normal form within a couple of weeks. Until then, the Lazy Summer Friday Morning Videos will continue, because darn it, I like them. And there may be the occasional short posting here and there, like this.)

Friday, July 09, 2010

Who doesn't adore these mellow-and-lazy-yet-tight-and-awesome performances from the old Midnight Special show? Well, okay, probably quite a few of you don't. I'm not here to argue though. So in the meantime, here's another one by an artist that probably none of you remember (but should). [Update, 6/9/10, 12:55pm, CST: Embedding should be fixed now. This one starts automatically, but give it time to load, though.] [ Update #2, 6/10/10, 2:19pm, CST: Okay, unfortunately, it looks like the Robert Dupree video is just a failure. My apologies, everybody, but since I made the determination to go live and lazy, I'm going to stick with it; I refuse to put up some crappy home-made manga-style video off YouTube just because it has the soundtrack I'm looking for. Anyway, here's some England Dan and John Ford Coley to make up for the mistake.]

Quotes

"Every one of the standards according to which action is condemned demands action. Although the dignity of persons is inevitably violated in action, this dignity would be far less recognized in the world than it is had it not been supported by actions such as the establishment of constitutions and the fighting of wars in defense of human rights. Action must be untruthful, yet religion, science, philosophy, and the arts, the main forms of absolute fidelity to the truth, could not survive were they unsupported by action. Action cannot but be anticommunal in some measure, yet communal relationships would be almost nonexistent without areas of peace and order, which are created by action. We must act hesitantly and regretfully, then, but still we must act."

(Glenn Tinder, The Political Meaning of Christianity: The Prophetic Stance [HarperSanFrancisco, 1991], 215)

"[T]he press was still the last resource of the educated poor who could not be artists and would not be tutors. Any man who was fit for nothing else could write an editorial or a criticism....The press was an inferior pulpit; an anonymous schoolmaster; a cheap boarding-school; but it was still the nearest approach to a career for the literary survivor of a wrecked education."

"Mailer was a Left Conservative. So he had his own point of view. To himself he would suggest that he tried to think in the style of [Karl] Marx in order to attain certain values suggested by Edmund Burke."

(Norman Mailer, The Armies of the Night [The New American Library, 1968], 185)

"All those rely on their hands, and each is skillful at his own craft. / Without them a city would have no inhabitants; no settlers or travellers would come to it. / Yet they are not in demand at public discussions, nor do they attain to high office in the assembly. They do not sit on the judge's bench or understand the decisions of the courts. They cannot expound moral or legal principles and are not ready with maxims. / But they maintain the fabric of this world, and the practice of their craft is their prayer."

(Ecclesiasticus (Sirach) 38:31-34, in The Revised English Bible with the Apocrypha [Oxford University Press, 1989])

"The tendency, which is too common in these days, for young men to get a smattering of education and then think themselves unsuited for mechanical or other laborious pursuits is one that should not be allowed to grow up among us...Every one should make it a matter of pride to be a producer, and not a consumer alone."

(Wilford Woodruff, Millennial Star [November 14, 1887], 773)

"We are parts of the world; no one of us is an isolated world-whole. We are human beings, conceived in the body of a mother, and as we stepped into the larger world, we found ourselves immediately knotted to a universe with the thousand bands of our senses, our needs and our drives, from which no speculative reason can separate itself."

"'Business!' cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. 'Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were all my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!'"

(Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol [Candlewick Press, 2006], 35)

"The Master said, 'At fifteen, I set my mind upon learning; at thirty, I took my place in society; at forty, I became free of doubts; at fifty, I understood Heaven's Mandate; at sixty, my ear was attuned; and at seventy, I could follow my heart's desires without overstepping the bounds of propriety.'"

"Lack of experience diminishes our power of taking a comprehensive view of the admitted facts. Hence those who dwell in intimate association with nature and its phenomena grow more and more able to formulate, as the foundations of their theories, principles which admit a wide and coherent development: while those whom devotion to abstract discussions has rendered unobservant of the facts are too ready to dogmatize on the basis of a few observations."

"[God] does not want men to give the Future their hearts, to place their treasure in it. . . . His ideal is a man who, having worked all day for the good of posterity (if that is his vocation), washes his mind of the whole subject, commits the issue to Heaven, and returns at once to the patience or gratitude demanded by the moment that is passing over him."

"Money is simply a tool. We use money as a proxy for our time and labor--our life energy--to acquire things that we cannot (or care not to) procure or produce with our own hands. Beyond that, it has limited actual utility: you can't eat it; if you bury it in the ground, it will not produce a crop to sustain a family; it would make a lousy roof and a poor blanket. To base our understanding of economy simply on money overlooks all other methods of exchange that can empower communities. Equating an economy only with money assumes there are no other means by which we can provide food for our bellies, a roof over our heads and clothing on our backs."

"A scholar's business is to add to what is known. That is all. But it is capable of giving the very greatest satisfaction, because knowledge is good. It does not have to look good or even sound good or even do good. It is good just by being knowledge. And the only thing that makes it knowledge is that it is true. You can't have too much of it and there is no little too little to be worth having. There is truth and falsehood in a comma."

"I believe in democracy. I accept it. I will faithfully serve and defend it. I believe in it because it appears to me the inevitable consequence of what has gone before it. Democracy asserts the fact the masses are now raised to a higher intelligence than formerly. All our civilization aims at this mark. We want to do what we can to help it. I myself want to see the result. I grant that it is an experiment, but it is the only direction society can take that is worth its taking; the only conception of its duty large enough to satisfy its instincts; the only result that is worth an effort or a risk. Every other possible step is backward, and I do not care to repeat the past. I am glad to see society grapple with issues in which no one can afford to be neutral."